Klopp called on his players to revive themselves in time to try to salvage their campaign in the Premier League and in Europe, but their were few positives for him having lost on penalties to Manchester City.

“You have to feel a defeat. You can’t say it wasn’t important because it was,” said Klopp. “If my press officer would allow me to say s--- I’d say s---. That’s normal, but only silly idiots stay on the floor and wait for the next defeat, you have to strike back.

“But you have to feel how it is like this – it’s not the best moment. Tomorrow morning we can change everything but right now we can change nothing. At this moment we have to go the hard way, nothing is easy. But if we carry on working really hard there is light at the end of the tunnel. That is really important. But tonight we feel rubbish.”

City had numerous chances to extend their lead prior to Philippe Coutinho’s late equaliser, with Klopp feeling it was an even contest for 120 minutes.

Klopp explained that Daniel Sturridge was not chosen to take a spot-kick because he was exhausted having only recently returned from a long injury lay-off.

“You need a bit of luck in a penalty shoot-out but we probably needed to shoot a bit better,” Klopp said. “They know how it works usually but today it was not too difficult for their goalkeeper and Simon [Mignolet, the Liverpool keeper] wasn’t too lucky. He was really close two or three times to the ball.

“Daniel couldn’t walk in the last few minutes. There was no option for him to take one – everyone who was available took a penalty. We asked the players. Milner would have taken the fifth. I’m sorry about losing on penalties. My feeling is disappointment – what else could it be? It was a great day until the last minutes of the penalty shoot-out.”

Liverpool will face City again at Anfield in the league on Wednesday.

“There were good moments from both sides offensively and there was good defending,” said Klopp. “We stayed patient, you could see it was possible we could score. We were perfectly organised, it was a perfect atmosphere and a great experience but in the end we lost. We tried everything.”